Darpa

DARPA, the military's premier R&D team has been given the task of producing "a dynamic putty-like material" that can be packed in around shattered bone to help support a patient's body during the healing process.

Aurora Flight Sciences has revealed the design of the aircraft it hopes will achieve the ambitious goals set out in DARPA's ambitious Vulture program: sustained uninterrupted flight for over five years at altitudes of 60,000-90,000 feet. Known as Odysseus,

As the new director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, Lisa Porter is the United States' answer to James Bond's Agent Q, but she's not crazy about the label. Porter is not the kind of person who likes being reduced to an easy metaphor, nor does she want her agency's intelligence work reduced to easy metaphors. That makes her the perfect head of the new agency, which has been tasked with developing technologies so far out that not even the Defense Department would fund them.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a number of technologies that tap into the brain's ability to detect threats before the conscious mind is able to process the information.

While audiences flood theaters this month to see the comic-book-inspired Iron Man, a real-life mad genius toils in a secret mountain lab to make the mechanical superhuman more than just a fantasy with the XOS Exoskeleton

Aurora Flight Sciences announced today that it has been awarded a contract to develop a radical new aircraft that can stay aloft for up to five years. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made the award under a program known as "Vulture."

A nasal spray could help students remember more from those all-night cram sessions by reducing sleep deprivation's negative effects like short-term memory loss, recent research has shown. The nasal spray improved short-term memory in animal tests and the spray's main component, Orexin-A, is a peptide found naturally in the brain, said Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spokeswoman Jan Walker.

Today, a handful of soldiers with advanced gear can see a few digital maps, through helmet-mounted monocles. Some pilots can get data about their world, on heads-up displays. But one day, troops could see an info-"augmented" reality all around them, with contact lenses that provide "first-person shooter-type video game" environments to those that wear them. At least, that's the idea behind the latest project from DARPA, the Pentagon's blue sky science and technology division.

"Augmented Cognition," the Darpa program to build computer interfaces that adapt to their users' brains, has officially run its course. But efforts to build mind-reading PCs continue throughout the military establishment.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's incredible array of futuristic research projects - everything from advanced network and communications implementations to powerful laser and unmanned aircraft development as well as developing techniques to help military personnel survive myriad dangerous situations - was on display in a report delivered to the House Armed Services Committee today by the agency's director, Tony Tether.